With the commodification of digital cameras, digital video has become so easy to produce that human beings can have trouble keeping up with it. Among the tools that computer scientists are developing to make the profusion ...

A specially formed material that can provide custom broadband absorption in the infrared can be identified and manufactured using "genetic algorithms," according to Penn State engineers, who say these metamaterials can shield ...

Following a public comment period and review, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has removed a cryptographic algorithm from its draft guidance on random number generators. Before implementing the change, ...

Suppose you're trying to navigate an unfamiliar section of a big city, and you're using a particular cluster of skyscrapers as a reference point. Traffic and one-way streets force you to take some odd turns, and for a while ...

Computer chips have stopped getting faster: The regular performance improvements we've come to expect are now the result of chipmakers' adding more cores, or processing units, to their chips, rather than increasing their ...

In recent years, mini wind energy has been developing in a spectacular way. According to estimates by the WWEA-World Wind Energy Association, the level of development of the mini wind energy industry is not the same as that ...

Molecular dynamics simulations often take too long to be practical for simulating chemical processes that occur on long timescales. Scientists DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the University of Chicago, and the ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a computational tool designed to guide future research on biochemical pathways by identifying which components in a biological system are related to specific ...

Speed dating, in which potential lovers size each other up in brief 10 minute encounters before moving on to the next person, can be an awkward and time-wasting affair. Finding the perfect research partnership is often just ...

Algorithm

In mathematics, computing, linguistics, and related subjects, an algorithm is a finite sequence of instructions, an explicit, step-by-step procedure for solving a problem, often used for calculation and data processing. It is formally a type of effective method in which a list of well-defined instructions for completing a task, will when given an initial state, proceed through a well-defined series of successive states, eventually terminating in an end-state. The transition from one state to the next is not necessarily deterministic; some algorithms, known as probabilistic algorithms, incorporate randomness.

A partial formalization of the concept began with attempts to solve the Entscheidungsproblem (the "decision problem") posed by David Hilbert in 1928. Subsequent formalizations were framed as attempts to define "effective calculability" (Kleene 1943:274) or "effective method" (Rosser 1939:225); those formalizations included the Gödel-Herbrand-Kleene recursive functions of 1930, 1934 and 1935, Alonzo Church's lambda calculus of 1936, Emil Post's "Formulation 1" of 1936, and Alan Turing's Turing machines of 1936–7 and 1939.